Just Rules (18 page)

Why was he so angry and so hurt? Did he want Susana to tell the whole world that they were together? He still wasn’t sure if they were together or not, so it didn’t make any sense that he expected her to know. But she didn’t have to be so cold about the fact that she wasn’t with anyone and that she didn’t want to be either. She could have made up any excuse and told the person who had called her —Mac was convinced that it was Pam— that someone was at her apartment, or she could have said that she didn’t want company. If they had been at his house, and someone called him, Mac would have come up with whatever excuse he could find as to not be interrupted. He would have said that he had the plague if necessary. But Susana didn’t care if she lied. She didn’t care if she said that no one was there. And Mac assumed that it meant that she wanted him to leave. If she had wanted him to stay, she would have ignored the call.

That’s why he was hurt, because he had started to make plans to spend a romantic day with her, and she had decided to spend it alone. She probably didn’t even have the intention of going back to bed with him.

“Admit it, Mac, you were just a fuck.”

He started on path to the parking garage where he had left his car that morning to go to his lawyer’s office, and once he got there he drove home.

A couple of days later, Susana was in the editorial room when she came across a news article about city hall having auctioned off a building site in the city to the best bidder, and it was awarded to a real estate company called Realtor, one of the biggest in all of Boston. Apparently, there was a foundation that was against it, which had presented several pieces of evidence claiming bribery and inexplicable preference during the bidding process. The foundation was called The Best Play, the same one that Susana had been closely following because she believed that it had a clear vision and that it was committed to the city. Susana not only respected the foundation, but she also really admired its projects. The news article itself wasn’t at all surprising. In every city there were auctions that didn’t play by the rules, and a city as big as Boston wasn’t an exception. Besides, Realtor had left a hefty deposit, there was no doubt about that, so perhaps there wasn’t anything illegal during the process. Anyway, the news article interested Susana for the humanistic aspect and because she finally had an excuse to investigate the mysterious foundation more thoroughly. It was societal and financial news at the same time, and she could easily include it in her program. She loved giving the national as well as international financial news, but she found it especially important to highlight the local news. And this certainly was local. Excited by the challenge of it, she picked up her phone and called someone she knew at city hall.

A half an hour later, and after promising Martha six tickets to one of the T.V. channel’s most followed programs (a reality show about mothers who wanted to marry off their children), she discovered who the founder of The Best Play was.

Kev MacMurray.

Martha, one of the mayor’s secretaries, told her that despite the fact that Mr. MacMurray barely played a role in the bidding and that he had given very strict instructions to his lawyer to remain anonymous, the day that Realtor won the auction he had no other choice but to sign the documents that they presented against city hall’s decision. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have made it on time.

It was the same day he went to see her at her apartment. Susana checked the date about twenty times until she had no other choice but to accept the obvious. That’s why he was so worked up the day he showed up at her house. Had he gone to see her so that he could tell her about it? Did he need to vent? Or did it not have anything to do with him stopping by?

After Mac left her apartment, and after looking at her the way he did, Susana cried in the shower from how confused she was. With Tim and with the only other boyfriend she’d had before, the one from the university, everything had been much easier. They had met, and after a few dates they had started sleeping together. In the end, both relationships ended without drama and without trauma, although the breakup with Tim had been indeed painful. But with Mac…she didn’t know what was happening inside her head, her heart, or the rest of her body.

She had gone from hating him to wanting to rip his clothes off when she saw him, from not being able to stand him to kissing him as if she needed him to breathe.

Part of her knew that she had hurt him that morning in her apartment, maybe she didn’t know why or how, but the way he looked at her when he left made it pretty clear. Susana had to hold back from going after him and from calling him, but after her shower she realized that she didn’t know what to say.

Mac was Tim’s best friend, but that was only the tip of the iceberg when considering all of the problems they would have to face if they ever had a relationship. The image she had formed of Kev MacMurray over time that made her think she knew who he was, fit less and less with reality and Susana was scared to make the wrong decision again. She really wasn’t good at choosing men.

That night, when it was time for her to deliver the economic news she was more nervous than usual.

She couldn’t stop thinking how Mac had said that he tortured himself by watching her on T.V. She tripped over her words three times and the presenter of the program had to remind her where she was at. Nobody thought too much of it. Everyone had a bad day now and then, but Susana had the feeling that it was more than obvious that she was worked up. She couldn’t go on like that. They would end up firing her. Because of that, and not for any other reason, when the program finished she didn’t go home. Instead, she hailed a cab and gave the driver Mac’s address.

Mac turned the T.V. off and put his glasses on again. Not too long ago he realized he needed them to read. He still wasn’t used to them, but he had to admit that he could see the words on the newspaper much more clearly since he started wearing them. He grabbed the documents he had left on top of the table before giving himself his daily dosage of Susana and started to read. He and his lawyer were fighting for the building site, but they had already found another project where they could put the foundation to use, and little by little it was coming together.

In one month, training for the Patriots was starting up again. After talking with Mike, and yes, after what had happened with Susana, he had decided that this was going to be his last season. Every time he thought about it he felt sick to his stomach, and his heart stopped for a second. Football had always been his refuge, a place where he could stop being Kev MacMurray and simply be Hurricane Mac, a great player who took care of his team. Mac had always known that his life would one day become complicated. He was like his parents, when he fell in love it would be for real and forever, and maybe that’s why it had taken him so long. Despite the fact that both his parents were dedicated to their respective careers, they’d always had a true devotion to one another and to their children. And Mac wanted that.

He was sure of it now.

And Susana was the first woman who made him want it. It had been like that since the beginning, and that’s why he had acted like a child, because she was engaged to his best friend and he couldn’t have her. Susana having rejected him was painful, but at the same time it made him open his eyes and start making decisions. Mac would enjoy his last year as captain of the Patriots as much as he could. They would win the Super Bowl, and after he would retire and put all of his efforts into the foundation and find a woman he could start a family with. That would be almost impossible after Susana, but he was going to try.

He heard a knock at the door and he let out a sigh of frustration. At this rate, he would never finish reading those papers. He stood up and went to open the door and seriously thought about paying for a traffic sign with all of the directions of that forest clearly marked.

“You wear glasses.”

Susana was standing in the doorway of his house. Again. Although this time she wasn’t holding an empty box of chocolates. Instead, she had her hands clasped in front of her, and she was nervously rocking back and forth on her heels.

Mac brought a hand up to his face and took off his glasses.

“They’re for reading,” he explained, confused and not knowing how to interpret her visit.

“Can I come in?”

No.

“Sure, come in.” He stepped aside and closed the door behind her.

“You have a beautiful place,” said Susana, stopping behind the sofa he had just been sitting on. “I didn’t tell you that last time,” she blushed.

“Thanks, it belonged to my grandmother.” Mac moved closer to Susana and did something that surprised them both: he gave her a soft kiss on the lips. He didn’t stick his tongue down her throat, that was not what that kiss was about. He just kissed her softly. Honestly, he wanted to know how he would feel if he could kiss her each day hello. He pulled away slowly and looked her in the eye. She stood there looking at him just as confused as he probably was.

“I’m sorry about the other day,” confessed Susana, after slowly letting out a breath. “I didn’t want you to leave. I was going to go back to the bedroom and be with you,” she made herself say.

It was difficult for Mac to breathe, but he was finally able to, and he noticed the way his heart was beating in his chest.

“Why did you say that on the phone?”

“It was Pam,” she began, with her head down. She lifted it up before continuing and faced him again.

Mac looked back at her and saw that she was being sincere, and that she was nervous. Maybe he had been too hard on her. It had barely been a month since Tim had gone to France and it was clear that Susana wasn’t the type of woman to just sleep with anyone. If he himself was a disaster, why the hell did he assume that she wasn’t?

“Me and you…”continued Susana, slightly uncertain. “I didn’t know if you wanted to stay.”

“I wanted to stay,” Mac assured her, and he raised a hand to brush away a lock of hair from her face. “I wanted to make love to you again.”

Susana blushed and put a hand on his waist.

“Me too.”

Mac closed the space that separated them by hugging her. When Susan was in his arms, Mac felt the lust that filled him every time she was close to him, but this time he felt something more. The knot that had been torturing him inside for weeks relaxed and his heart started to beat more slowly.

“What are we doing, Kev?” Susan rubbed her cheek against his torso and Mac sighed before kissing the top of her head.

“I don’t know. I never imagined myself like this with you.” He moved back a little to look her in the eye. “And I swear if you had married Tim, I would have never tried anything with you.”

“I know.”

Even before, when she thought that Mac was a millionaire playboy, Susana knew that he would have never tried to seduce the fiance or wife of his best friend.

“I think that’s why I was always so defensive around you,” he continued. “Because I knew that I couldn’t have you.” He smiled, making fun of himself. “It was rather immature of me.”

“The same thing happened to me,” she blushed again, and hid her face in Mac’s torso.

“What? What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me.”

Susan breathed deeply and let Mac’s only smell envelop her.

“I used to get furious when your smell would linger on my clothes or my hair,” said Susana. “You always smell like mint, and whenever we happened to be around each other, I smelled you for hours, even days, and I barely even got close to you. You already know how much I love chocolate mint truffles and your smell reminds me of them.”

“It’s the massage oil I use when I get hurt,” he confessed, after the lump in his throat went away.

“It’s you.”

Mac kissed her on the head again.

“Why don’t you like me to call you Susana?” asked Mac, enjoying the intimacy.

Susana breathed deeply again and tightened her arms against his waist. Kev held her tighter

“My father and I left Spain after my mother died. I was ten years old and when we got to New York I didn’t know a word of English. My dad spent most of his time at the hospital, dealing with things related to the move such as, looking for a nanny for me, looking for a school, and looking for a place to live. Things like that, and I wasn’t part of any of it. And just when I started to feel comfortable we moved to Chicago because he met Lisa, who owned a restaurant there. And I had to start all over again. Dad and Lisa got married and I made their life a living hell.” She stopped for a few seconds and let the heat from Kev’s body penetrate hers before continuing. “Lisa got pregnant, and Nora was born. She was a beautiful baby and I remember thinking that she was going to have it easy, that she was never going to have to be the new girl, that she would speak English from the time she was little, and that she would never be
the Spanish girl
of the class. The next day I started telling everyone that my name was Susan. And I’ve been Susan ever since.”

“Not to me,” said Mac. “I always had the feeling that Susan Lobato wasn’t for real, but that Susana —he ran his hands over her back— Susana was.”

“My father calls me Susana as well,” she sighed. “And my mother always called me that, too. Lisa, who I started calling mom two years ago, only calls me Susan.”

Mac wanted to know more details about that story, he wanted to know everything that had happened to Susana when she was little, and about the problems that she had to face, but at the moment there was something else much more important.

He needed to kiss her.

“And may I call you Susana?”

“It’s the first time you’ve asked me. It didn’t bother you not having my permission before.”

“It matters to me now.”

“I like that you call me Susana, Kev,” she added, with a slight smile.

He returned the smile and bent down to kiss her. His plan was to move back immediately after the kiss, but his lips refused to abandon hers, and he held her tightly in his arms. She tried to get as close to him as possible, and she sighed in the way that made him lose control, what little control he had whenever they were close to each other. Giving up any attempt to maintain that conversation, the first in which they didn’t fight one another, Mac picked her up and walked toward his bedroom.